A fundamental goal of automotive heating and cooling systems is to make vehicle occupants comfortable. The effectiveness of heating and cooling systems is largely dependent on the ability of the temperature conditioned air to contact and surround all portions of the occupant's body. However, in applications such as vehicles and the like, the occupants are typically fixed in one position with a large portion of the body's surface against the surface of a seat. In such applications, the distribution of temperature conditioned air into the cabin of the vehicle to heat or cool the occupant is less effective due to the somewhat limited surface area of contact with the occupant's body.
To address this problem, many current vehicles utilize temperature controlled seats in order to properly heat or cool an occupant's body. The current heated seats, however, suffer from a variety of disadvantages. First, these heated seats are manually actuated by a driver or passenger and have a limited number of settings. The typical number of settings available with current heated seats is 1 to 5. While these systems will control the temperature of the seat based on the setting selected, these seats have a difficult time maintaining a desired temperature. Consequently, the temperature of these current heated seats is constantly being adjusted in order to provide a constant and comfortable temperature.